Have you ever awoken to the same thoughts over and over again for the course of almost everyday? And most of the thoughts that reoccur are mostly negative thought. Isn’t that horrifying?!

Well, I first did not realise it for years. Several years ago on a fine one day, I woke up with the same reoccurring thoughts about my anger towards a beloved one. The thoughts would linger even until I was having my breakfast, and worse… it would continue throughout the day if my mind was not kept busy with other things. I was so engrossed with the train of thought. Trying to rationalise, look for more faults so that the blame and anger would be justified. And if the feeling of anger subsides, I would still find excuses and reason to validate my anger towards that person.

That is how the mind works. That is what the Ego wants to hang on to. Did you know that we have circa 60000-70000 thoughts per day and 90% of the are negative thoughts? And these 90% of the negative thoughts plays in the head like a broken record player everyday! Ironically is that every thought you think and every word you say is an affirmation.

When I realised this, I knew I had to make a stop to it. Then I discovered that those negative thoughts became automatic, that is why some people would call it as Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs). I read about this is in an article which was taken from an Australian yoga magazine. If those negative thoughts appeared automatically, that means I have developed a habit for it. If it is a habit, then it could be my character. And if it became my character, that would become my destiny. Whoa….no way will I have such kind of destiny! No-uh!

So, I had to stop this bad habit by training my brain to lessen those negative thoughts. That’s where I came about to be acquainted with meditation. It is strange that at first I was not too keen on the word meditation. Because I heard from a lot of people that meditation is like a ritual for a certain religion. Yeah right! Those people who talks in that sense means that they need to open up their horizon and start reading and discovering a whole new world of the neuroscience.

Meditation is not about levitating or will be in conflict your religious beliefs. Because in all religions meditation exists. The monks do it, the Sufis do it, etc. I would say that meditation is actually a form of “mind training”. It is true that a lot of people are apprehensive to the word because it is something “new” in the western world of psychology which is adopted by the whole world. But I remember a quote by Carl Jung, “What the East knows about the human mind is at least 2000 years ahead of western psychology”. So, you know how it is. People are afraid of the things that they don’t know. But once they are well informed, the fear disappears.

Let’s go back to “mind training”. The habit that I have developed in thinking of the same things over and over again for everyday in my certain period of life means it is a form of a repetition that reoccurs. So the only antidote to is to train the mind to not think that way. It is quite and exhausting job If I were to try to block all those negative thoughts that comes in my mind. The thing I need to do is not to directly grab the mind and try to tame it. There is another of a more simple way, and that is through controlling the breathing. When we are able to control our breathing, automatically we control the mind! A-ha!

You see, there’s such a clear connection between the breathing and the brain – which is used to express the mind. I will talk more on that in my next article. To make the story short, when I have succeeded in training the mind, I can catch glimpses of the thoughts. And the more I control my breathing, the thoughts lessened. And then when that happens, I was able to reprogram my old pattern of thinking negative thoughts

Therefore, I would recommend that everyone should be thought mind training. It breaks the pattern of negative self talk too. Imagine what life could be if we rid of all those negative self talks and negative thoughts. Life would be like a breeze…